


Pigeon Wings

by esutonia



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Drug Addiction, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2018-11-03 08:01:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10963056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esutonia/pseuds/esutonia
Summary: Kaneki Ken prefers to separate his life into two halves: Before Rize, and After Rize. Though he’s a fan of Shakespearean tragedies himself, he would hardly call himself a protagonist; it would be an insult to his work. The only traits that Kaneki shares with Othello or Hamlet are perhaps his fatal flaws.





	1. Birds

**Author's Note:**

> References:  
> Methamphetamine is one of the most common recreational drugs in Japan. It is called "shabu".  
> Despite strict anti-drug laws, those incarcerated for drug-related offenses are often not sent to addiction-rehabilitation programs. As a result, recidivism rates for these crimes are high.  
> Harajuku, a district of Shibuya, Tokyo, is the de facto street fashion and youth culture capital of Japan.  
> San'ya, a neighborhood of Taisho, Tokyo, is the reputed "underbelly" of the city, and is known for its relatively high poverty and crime rates.

Tsukiyama Shuu met Kaneki Ken in Economics 102, in a drafty lecture hall.

Only Kaneki was aware of this.

Tsukiyama was a peacock; ostentatious and glamorous and flamboyant in every way. Kaneki was a pigeon, with his gray wings and inoffensive existence. He could spot Tsukiyama’s violently violet hair from a kilometer away, and for that, he envied him. Tsukiyama Shuu belonged to the youths that marched down Harajuku, who donned gothic lolita and rockabilly like nobody’s business and defied the uniformity of the salaryman that Kaneki was destined to be. Tsukiyama didn’t need economics. He didn’t need to conform to anyone’s standards, except perhaps Kamii University’s (no doubt the sole reason he was in this class).

Kaneki was shy, back then. He admired the peacock’s feathers, but took refuge underneath his own drab wings. So he took a photo of Tsukiyama with his eyes, pulled out the Polaroid and tucked it into the corner of his brain’s library.

Proof of an unreachable beauty.

* * *

If Kaneki was a bird, Hide was the sun that illuminated his wings and cast a shadow on the ground. Those who turned their eyes could not discern Kaneki’s true weakness; see that the black silhouette was that of a common pigeon, disguised as a songbird.

The sun, however, knew the secrets that Kaneki tried desperately to hide. And he hated him for it, even though Hide would give him that benign smile and clap him on the back like a brother.

“Aww, Kaneki, Rize’s way out of your league! Who are you interested in, really?”

And Kaneki would smile, cupping his chin and laughing nervously. Unhappiness stirred in the back of his head, uncoiled its tendrils and threatened to wrap itself around his frontal lobe.

But Kaneki cared too much about appearances. He did back then, anyway.

* * *

Rize was the viper, who wrapped herself around Kaneki’s left arm and whispered sweet nothings into his ear. Kaneki was enraptured by her danger; he cherished the smell of her purple hair and the curves of her hips. She belonged with the Harajuku crowds, just like Tsukiyama. The kind of audacity and carefree nature that Kaneki admired too much.

Years later, he would remember Rize’s eyes and wonder what they saw in him.

The rest of them saw Rize for the snake she was, tried to warn Kaneki. But he loved her poison, loved her scales. Even when they were killing him.

* * *

Rize loved to break the rules. And he broke them for her, for the rush of her body next to him. She languished in his twin-sized bed, watching him lazily as he anguished at his desk.

“What’s wrong?” She asked, saccharine-sweet and innocent.

“I have midterm exams tomorrow,” he grit between his teeth. “And I’ve no time.”

He should have known, then, what his role was in the story. Rize had yanked him from the pages of Titus Andronicus, pulled him into the Old Testament. She swung from the tree in the Garden of Eden, poised to offer her fatal fruit.

“Try this,” she crooned, her tail caressing the apple. “You’ll do great,” she reassured him.

Kaneki was a pigeon, boring and unworthy. He should have known a lot of things about Rize: that she did not care, that she was cold-hearted, that she broke windows and took bites from her victims and left a mess. Most of all, he should have known how lonely he was.

But he took the apple. He broke the rules for her, took a bump of the shabu. He was swept up by euphoria, the drug shooting through his veins.

Kaneki Ken was vulnerable, high as a kite. He never wanted to come down.

* * *

The greatest crime was that Kaneki paid Rize to poison him. He handed her 3,000 yen for a miniscule bag of happiness and a smile that lifted him off his feet. Sometimes she’d take a hit of her own, bounce off the dormitory walls along with him.

He studied for eight hours straight and aced his exams, forgot what sleep felt like, crashed to earth at the comedown. A pigeon wasn’t meant to fly as high as the hawk, God warned. But Kaneki had been through enough in his life to know that God didn’t give a fuck about him. He showed the big man his tail, sped into the stratosphere with the force of a jet and never looked back.

It had started off so innocently, he remembered. An eighth of a gram to get him through a work-laden night, or the times that he preferred to fuck Rize like a rabbit instead of plowing through an analysis of fiscal policy. His boring life, lit up with Shibuya neon once every few months.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?” Rize whispered breathlessly, after their fifth round of the night. Kaneki’s hands felt jittery and his bones poked through his skin in a way that they hadn’t ten kilos ago. His mouth was dry and his neurons fired like high-powered pistons. He felt poisoned, corrupted. He parted his cotton lips, hands entwined in Rize’s.

“Yeah,” he breathed.

* * *

Economics crawled along at a sluggish pace every day. Kaneki’s mind ran circles around it for the whole hour, always high after his morning hits. He made a habit of worrying his lip while staring at the back of Tsukiyama’s head; his notebook became covered with spots of blood that dripped from his cracked mouth.

Hide didn’t smile anymore; Kaneki grew annoyed, when his perpetually-good mood was not returned.

“Are you okay?” Hide asked, his eyebrows knitted in worry. “You look ill.”

Kaneki scratched his chin. “Just a little stressed, that’s all.” Hide never looked convinced.

Kaneki rationalized his treatment of Hide. The sun was only jealous of the bird that proved more beautiful than it. Kaneki had to be better, even if he needed more shabu every week to feel the same way. Hide was helping him, he thought, as he snuck a few thousand yen from Hide’s dorm. _He’s saving me from my boring life._

The nervous looks from his classmates wormed under his skin, even worse than the phantom ants that crawled over him at night. He was angry; they disapproved of happiness, his and Rize’s.

“They’re boring,” Rize reassured him. “They don’t know what it’s like to be beautiful.”

She passed the makeshift pipe to him, in Kaneki’s increasingly bare room. He needed more money. Vaguely, he wondered what else he could sell or steal.

The pearly white smoke snaked its way into his lungs, electrifying every cell. He breathed out the ghost, and it dissipated into the tepid air. Rize leaned against his thin shoulder, wrapping herself around his arm and teasing the pipe from his hand.

“I love you,” Kaneki said suddenly.

“That’s nice,” she said, lifting it to her lips.

* * *

In the end, God listened. Thunder crashed down on him like falling steel beams, leaving him shivering in sobriety’s unforgiving grip.

He doesn’t remember what happened clearly; all he recalls is that they had gotten careless. Nights of sharing a couple of grams had become routine: hit, pass, hit, pass. They ignored the knocks at the dorm room’s door, dancing to shitty pop music until the high wore off. Hide’s face poked guiltily from down the hall as they were led away.

He only remembers being sober for the first time in days (or weeks, or months or even years, he doesn’t recall that either). It squeezes his torso until he retches, beats at his head until he feels like his eyes have been impaled with needles. With badly-shaking hands, he catches his reflection in the metal handcuffs.

He’s not a pigeon anymore; of that, he’s sure.

He doesn’t know what he’s looking at. He glances around him, looking for Rize to tell him what’s going on. She’s not there anymore.

Both hands comb through his tangled, messy hair. A few white hairs stick to his fingers when he pulls them away. When did he dye it?

The light is far too bright. Fluorescent bulbs glare at him with artificial whiteness, reflecting off the sterile concrete and cell bars hauntingly. He wishes for his mother; for her fists that could distract him from anything. The loneliness is unbearable. Pigeon’s wings, now clipped. Where is the sun?

He lies down.


	2. Flowers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tsukiyama Shuu loved flowers. Fleeting, delicate beauty with a purpose behind every fragile petal. So benign, so unlike him.
> 
> Tsukiyama Shuu was made of something stronger. His constitution was that of steel, cold and unforgiving. Every layer of loud fabric and sheer foundation toyed with the eyes, pressed at the throat.
> 
> There was a difference, between being spoiled and being sheltered. He had a silver spoon in his mouth, and he admitted it freely. But of the many words that filled Tsukiyama’s pages, “naive” was not one of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Thank you all for your comments! I appreciate every one of them, and I hope to use your advice to better my writing.  
> 2\. Rize/Kaneki is a pairing that I wrote about for story-building purposes. The end-pair will be Tsukiyama/Kaneki, so I apologize for being ambiguous about it.  
> 3\. The italicized chapters may go away as I publish more. Events as described in the story are not necessarily in chronological order, keep that in mind.  
> 4\. Plot events will vaguely follow the canon timeline, but this is most definitely a human AU with canon divergence. Kind of like a parallel universe, now that I think about it.

The people on Harajuku called him the “flower man” in passing. They marveled at the custom-made pieces in his shop windows, the glossy two-page spreads in fashion magazines that he had fought so hard for. With measuring tape around his neck and fabric scissors in his hand, he cut tallow from taffeta, tulips from tulle, toloache from toile. He longed to be different from his father. He longed to freeze a flower’s beauty in time; to render tissue-paper petals into iron. He wished for too many things.

Clothing was far from permanent, but it was a damned good place to start.

* * *

He did not meet Kaneki Ken in a drafty lecture hall, five years ago. Peacocks did not care about the affairs of the pigeons. It was a mistake to live by that rule.

Sometimes, the beauty therein lay with the unassuming.

Kaneki the freshman dreamed about girls with purple hair and nominal GDP. Tsukiyama the senior drew camellias in his economics notebooks. They were worlds apart, back in the day. Years later Tsukiyama thought about the black-haired boy, as nameless as the rest, and wondered at the little life he kept. That Kaneki Ken would have never loved a man like him, and that Tsukiyama Shuu would have never given Kaneki the time of day.

In sophomore year, Tsukiyama once took an introductory biology course. Something about entropy that he had forgotten: the universe gravitates towards disorder. How, then, had Tsukiyama and Kaneki gone on their own chaotic paths—then meandered back to each other? How many universes had played their games in that same lecture hall, at that same moment in time?

So much pain could have been saved, if Tsukiyama had glanced up for a second. Maybe they would have met all those years ago, maybe Kaneki Ken would still be that black-haired pigeon, maybe Tsukiyama would still have clean arms. Maybe, maybe.

He looks closely at the pigeons, nowadays.

* * *

His father once told him that he was special.

“You’ve got your mother’s melancholy nature, and my personality to cover it up,” he laughed. Tsukiyama saw no humor in it.

It was true, whatever he said. Tsukiyama was a liar, then and always. He played the popularity games in his high school, Chopin on the family Steinway, football on the bowling green. At night, he’d kneel at the coffee table and cobble silk roses that Kanae scattered all over his room. The shiny veneer of normalcy sealed off every pore that emanated resentment.

In truth, Tsukiyama felt nothing. His constitution was strong, but so was his apathy.

So he lied to get by. He laughed loudly, sighed softly. He wore every neon color of the rainbow to disguise the lack of it in his life. It was so much easier to bend with the wind than to accept defeat.

Mirumo never told his son why his mother was dead, but Shuu had his suspicions. It ran in the family.

* * *

He didn’t want to die. He just didn’t care.

It was a point he reiterated to his therapist time and time again, but without fail he’d watch her mouth pinch unpleasantly and scribble something incriminating on her clipboard. And she wonders why he stopped going years ago.

He wouldn’t make a bad life coach, he thought, as he chalked the outline of a slip dress onto blue paisley cotton. Eccentricity was all the advertisement those poor loons needed. Someone as crazy as them.

Taking a final measurement, he stole a glance at the sketch in his notebook. Another tall, anonymous model wearing that simple dress. He needed to contract some interesting ones soon. There was no point in using the bland mannequins that strutted the runway so expressionlessly, as was the trend in Shibuya.

There were too many long-legged cranes wandering the streets of Tokyo.

* * *

The Tsukiyamas were an old family. Shuu in particular came from a long line of purple-haired men and women. An unusual color, to say the least. But then, the Tsukiyamas were unusual people.

Most of what Tsukiyama remembered about his mother could be ended with the words “so I’m told”. His memories amounted to little more than a shoebox of memories, pieced together from eyewitness accounts and questionable sources; a monochrome tapestry of “ _he said_ ”s and “ _she said_ ”s.

His mother had blue eyes. His mother had hair like lavender. His mother had his expressive, bright eyes, his high nose, his proud jaw. It was unusual, walking around like he was a living relic; a portrait who had forgotten its painter. Like his body was not really his.

* * *

When he left university, he broke the line of Tsukiyamas that had plagued him decades before he had even been cursed with existence.

A young man like that designing clothes , sniffed second-cousins and great-uncles. Palling around with the youth delinquents in Harajuku, so little regard for his father. Oh, what the late Lady Tsukiyama would think. Even Kanae was disappointed.

But he had been around for twenty-five years, and he knew better than to seek the approval of the dead and soon-to-be-dead. His business was with the living, whether or not he wanted to be considered part of that population. Mirumo would always accept his son with open arms, but his son was no longer the reincarnation of a name. Tsukiyama Shuu belonged to himself.

Tsukiyama Shuu had his red eyes. Tsukiyama Shuu had choppy, pale blue hair like cornflowers. Tsukiyama Shuu had his soulful, sad eyes, his straight nose, his defined face. It had taken him time to figure it out.

He glances outside, at the gray sky and colorful dotted people milling around the streets below. They are special. _He_ is special.

He looks away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading.


	3. Pieces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe he’s a centipede, too. A centipede does not care about losing a single leg. Kaneki had lost a whole segment; the head attached a centimeter closer to the tail and suddenly everything was wrong. The pieces still worked as advertised, but the controls had shifted three degrees to the left.

How cruel, for the chemicals choking his veins to make him feel so alive. Now that they are gone, Kaneki has never felt closer to excruciating death.

Coming down from the high is not unlike a hangover, with a slight tilting sensation and distortion of time. He feels too much: the scorching fluorescent lights beating down, the cold concrete floor, the sound of breathing amplified times a thousand. His mouth is dry as a husk but there is no water to drink; he doubts he has the strength to lift his head anyway. There is nothing except for the floor he sits on, that which he clings to for fear of losing his sanity entirely. No room in his head to regret the mess he’s in, or register the gravity of his situation. He does not miss Hide or Rize. He only misses the shabu, its familiar tendrils shriveled with harsh cell lights.

“Count backwards from a thousand by sevens,” says the reptilian guard, a smile (or leer, it’s difficult to say) on his broad face. He cracks his knuckles and spits out numbers. Six-hundred seventy-eight. Six-hundred seventy-one. _Minus seven?_ Six-hundred sixty…? Fuck.

Nine-hundred ninety-three.

* * *

Despite falling into the deepest valley of his life, he craves the officers’ respect. He ingratiates himself, sparing no details as he pulls the stains of his crimes from the closet. He was caught red-handed, as they say; there was no point in denying it. Sometimes they bring him coffee, but they are not generous enough for sugar. It reminds him of his mother, bringing him picture books from the secondhand store because she spent so little time paying attention to what he read. When rewards were so rare and punishment so common, Kaneki learned how to accept the little things early on.

But there was nothing “little” about getting high. Nobody got “a little” high. Nobody got “a little” jail time. Not in Japan, at least.

So he throws Rize under the bus. It’s only what she would do. He expects she’s in as much trouble as him. Rize might have been his first girlfriend, but he already knows who his true love is. It’s reckless abandon, spurred on by such great heights. Icarus was so in love with the sky that he forgot to fly away from the sun. Kaneki could smile and let his loneliness be torn from his lips as he plunged to the streets, the impact be damned. It made him forget that he was a dumb pigeon. It made him die a little more every day, but so beautifully he decayed.

* * *

He feels better after his three weeks. He won’t be leaving yet; certainly won’t be for at least a year. But ever so slowly, his body begins to accept its new, broken state. The pieces seal themselves.

It’s not so bad. When he’s not being interrogated, he sits on the cold floor and meditates, if only to shut out the sensation of centipedes scurrying under his skin. A sensation he recalls from his addicted days. Only now, the guards eye him warily if he makes any move to skin-pick.

Maybe he’s a centipede, too. A centipede does not care about losing a single leg. Kaneki had lost a whole segment; the head attached a centimeter closer to the tail and suddenly everything was wrong. The pieces still worked as advertised, but the controls had shifted three degrees to the left. He tries to remember the way he felt when Hide smiled, told him that they’d always be friends.

He can’t remember what Hide’s smile looked like, and it scares him.

* * *

Slowly, he works his way through the prison library. He can’t be the only one who uses it, judging by the heavily-graffitied books lining the shelves, but he’s never seen another soul there.

 _Get me out of here_ , says The Metamorphosis, scribbled in the margin. If only.

 _Poor Otama_ , someone writes in The Wild Geese. It’s like he’s joined a depressing book club.

Stuck in the bottom shelf, he unearths a copy of the Tao Te Ching. In Chinese. A gem, if a somewhat unreadable one.

 _He who can take the ??? of a nation,_  
_Is said to be the master of the nation._  
_He who can ??? the misfortune of a nation,_ _  
_ Is said to be the ruler of the world.

He learns a lot of new characters.

* * *

At night, Rize’s hair tickles his nose and he can smell her scent lingering on his clothes. Sometimes she appears in his fever dreams, always sitting in a field of spider lilies and swaying in the wind. He wants to hate her, but every time he tries to find the blame he lacks the pins to stick it on her.

Rize was the catalyst, not the reactant. Kaneki was always destined to ruin his own life. If she didn’t help him along, then someone else would.

She didn’t love him. She couldn’t love someone who worshipped the ground she walked on. She wasn’t that sort of person.

If he ever saw her again, he doesn’t know what he would do. It’s probably for the best.

* * *

Japan’s criminal justice system has a 99% conviction rate, apparently. It’s no surprise, then, that Kaneki falls into the vast majority. A few months ago, this situation would have been laughable. He could laugh, back then.

Now, not even a gram makes him happy enough to find humor in anything. His own damn fault, like everything else.

Getting over the sleepless nights and leaden body stretches out the time until he won’t look at clocks anymore, for fear of realizing how much time he has left. He made that mistake early on, hastily glancing at the library clock. It was 11:23, and the glass veneer threw his pale complexion back at him. A skull with white hair and large eyes like black holes opened its bony jaw in a silent scream, clutching at the tattered copy of Kafka at the Shore in his hand. Recoiled, horrified at his own face.

No, he doesn’t care to think about time.

* * *

Ironically, incarceration seems to agree with Kaneki Ken.

It’s not unlike an evening at his aunt’s apartment; at least, one that spans months. Sit quietly and face the wall, for hours on end. Fold up the futon in the morning and unroll it at night. No eye contact, ever. Sometimes he even stares at the hands across from him at mealtimes, imagining that they belonged to his little cousin. But Kaneki is never dumb enough to look up, lest he be forced to kneel for twelve hours like his cousin’s mother was wont to do.

* * *

Hide visited him one time. For once, he had nothing to say.

“I’m sorry,” he says. Kaneki shrugs. _I deserved it._ The officer in the room makes the _scritch-scritch_ noises with his pencil, transcribing their pitiful conversation.

The final draft is two words long, but there was no need to speak about the uncomfortable air, the humid silence and unspoken guilt.

Hide did not visit again. Kaneki did not miss him. He still couldn’t remember what he looked like when he smiled. That bothered him more.

* * *

At night, purple hair haunts his dreams. He used to toss and turn, but being woken by the guards every time he shifted position soon straightens him. Sleep doesn’t agree with him, even before he skipped eight nights at a time and typed eight thousand words in an hour. On those sleepless nights (which occur more often than he’d like to admit), he folds his arms up and pretends he’s back in Econ 102. Soft snoring from his neighbor sounds like his professor’s voice, oddly enough. Something resembling normalcy. It’s the last thing he clearly recalls, and it is for the next three years of his short life.

He does not know it yet, but he will change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Alt-J - Hand-Made](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3fIS4EToGc)


	4. Drops

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She caresses his cheek like a mother, and he resists the urge to lean into her touch. Any closer, and he might crack. The soft curves of her breasts nudge his shoulder.
> 
>  _What have we learned today?_ She asks, tracing the side of his neck. He shuts his eyes to block out the blinding white light, burying his vision in red. Steeling his composure and the blood rushing south, he exhales.
> 
> “I must be stronger,” he whispers, only half-believing it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See that new tag up there? It says, "Graphic Depictions of Violence", just in case you haven't read it. Now you have been warned.
> 
> I suppose they got what they deserved, in the end.

_It’s his first day of school, again. The smell of the classroom hangs in the air like smoke, the unmistakable scent of small children’s messes and used craft supplies. A brown-haired boy with spiky, unruly hair talks his ear off at tiny tables that they barely fit into now._

_“I’ve been away from home before,” he brags. “I’m not scared of school.” Hideyoshi’s small round eyes gleam eagerly, somehow smaller in his head as a child than as an adult. His tiny, pudgy child-hands haphazardly zigzag the cutouts from their paper as if he’s never handled safety-scissors before._

_“You’re good at this,” Hide says, like it’s a fact._

_Kaneki does not tell. He does not tell Hide that he had spent much of his short life cutting sewing patterns for his mother, nor does he mention that he will likely be cutting shapes for most of the night. Though padded with baby-fat, Kaneki’s hands are skilled and dexterous, fiddling with scissors too dull for his taste. Pencil lines gleam dully in the sunlight on the coarse blue paper._

_“Are you scared or something?” Hide asks._

_The paper groans, the scissors cleaving it cleanly. He guides it around the curve of Rize’s drawn hair, the folds of her dress._

_“Yes,” he says._

* * *

 Scraps of frayed fabric fall away from his hands as the memory dissolves. Numbly, he swipes them away, tidies up the bits of material left outside the lines and slides the piece over. A steady pain is creeping up his neck, freezing him in place. He dares not move his eyes.

The fabric scissors wobble in his hand; the joint is slightly loose. Sharp, deadly if used correctly. He doesn’t need to see the guards’ faces to know that they’re eyeing him mockingly, as if daring him to have an independent thought.

Kaneki spares a glance at the pattern in his hand. Coarse, rough fabric only fit for medical scrubs, with the lifeless blue to match. Rize is not there, as if she never was. Rize would never be caught in such an unfashionable place.

And Kaneki had such unfashionable issues.

* * *

 “This color looked different in the samples,” Tsukiyama says, the dress laid out on his smooth white table. His long arms lean on the edge, and he scrutinizes the cloth mournfully.

“I’m sorry.” Kanae bows, feathery hair swaying. “I can call the suppliers, if you’d like.”

Tsukiyama calmly folds up the blue dress, pushing it away. “No. Scrap the whole design.”

“But, Shuu-sama—”

“It doesn’t work,” he grits. He could kick the table, but it would do no good, except perhaps solidify his reputation as his father’s brat. “Thank you, Kanae.”

Kanae melts away demurely, closing the door in a blur of lavender hair and pressed pastel slacks. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he flips through his sketchbook. A blank-bodied model, the clean lines of her shift smoothing away curves and filling them with androgynous blocks. The blue a whisper, unassuming but alive.

The pile of fabric on his workbench is not his. It is unpolished, unrefined, unworthy. It simply does not work. A problem he’s encountered before, but never with such frustrating frequency. Design after design, the life lost somewhere between canvas and cloth.

With a flourish, he tears out the offending page but stops short of the waste basket.

He pins it to his cork board with the rest of his failed experiments, a growing collage of decayed ideas.

It’s morbid curiosity.

* * *

 Conjugal visits happen every day, in Kaneki’s prison. The one in his head. Books are few and far between, most hours spent in silent meditation. His bowed head and crossed legs disguise his inner games of shadow-puppets, but no one gets close enough to see his vacant face.

People line the corridors of the imaginary dormitories to speak to him, if only for a few words. Perhaps a proverb, or improvised couplets. Old classmates, strangers, all speaking to him in the tiny space between his ears. The days slip by like rice paper in the breeze.

 _Be considerate of others_ , his dear departed mother says.

 _I will_ , he replies, even though he knows he won’t. Mother lit herself on fire to keep his aunt warm, and his burnt fingers won’t let him forget.

 _Are you scared, Kaneki?_ Hide says.

 _Yes_ , he replies. _I am_.

* * *

 Spring is in bloom, the year Kaneki leaves.

Outside the gates, dark-leafed bushes sag with the weight of their flowers. The peonies press their pink faces to the soaked pavement. Catkins litter the ground, as does a fine powdery pollen. An alien landscape.

He sneezes.

* * *

 His walls are too white, the sounds too loud. His days at Kamii wash away and slap him all at once in waves. Choking on seawater, he finds footing just before he is swept off his feet again.

A sweet, naive officer watches him as he settles into the halfway house. It pains him; she’s a girl too nice for people like him. Long lists of “r” words (recidivism, rehabilitation, recovery, retaliation, rainbow), meant to reassure but riotous in his jumbled brain.

For the first time in years, Kaneki cares. About where he goes, what he does, who he meets. Unceremoniously wrenched from his life, unable to watch it all decay until it is all thrust into his arms again. How is he supposed to rebuild a house with rotting wood and broken nails?

The tatami underneath his futon is warm; unusually so. He rolls it out and goes to sleep, the foreign sounds of cars and laughter keeping him up much longer than it used to. But sleep always comes. Even if it doesn’t last forever.

He dreams of Rize. Her hair billows in his face, but the smell of her shampoo has long been forgotten. A poisonous smile tipping painted lips, a girlish tilt in her hips. White spider-lilies bury her knees in miniature spires, white stretching around her as far as the eye can see.

She caresses his cheek like a mother, and he resists the urge to lean into her touch. Any closer, and he might crack. The soft curves of her breasts nudge his shoulder.

 _What have we learned today?_ She asks, tracing the side of his neck. He shuts his eyes to block out the blinding white light, burying his vision in red. Steeling his composure and the blood rushing south, he exhales.

“I must be stronger,” he whispers, only half-believing it.

_Why? Your mama’s love not good enough for you? Or have you accepted your fate?_

Silent, he pushes his feet deeper into the lily field. The flowers buckle, revealing the blank white slate beneath. Pushing up through the ground and defying all logic.

She giggles. It echoes through the atrium, multiplying Rize by five. _And how will you do that?_

“I don’t know.”

The feeling of hair tickling his face irritates him. _This is my last lesson to you, Kaneki Ken_ , she teases. _Strength is not a matter of luck. You can spend your life wallowing in your series of fuck-ups, or perhaps you can become something better._

Slowly, he lifts his hand and rests it in the curve of her jaw. Her skin is cold like porcelain. He moves his arm away, where it rests on his knee. The familiar pain of holding his head down comes rushing back as he bends forward.

In a flash, he snaps his head backwards, catching Rize squarely in the mouth. He whirls around and watches her body fall, sinking into the white flowers soundlessly. White noise cottons his ears and time slows. Pinned down by his knees, he digs her hips into the ground. She falls limp like a doll with his hands around her neck, still giving him a red, vacant smile.

Rize’s head cracks back as his fist connects with her temple, a bloodless bruise swelling in the divot of her skull. The hands that attempt to pry his away scrabble weakly at his wrists. Her disgusting leer enrages him, and his next blows are his attempts to wipe it from her face. White teeth cut into his knuckles and fly off in shards. What little color in her face he aims for; green veins along her eyes, a brown freckle on her nose, blue capillaries in her eyelids. Rize’s battered mouth hisses wetly as she struggles. It sends a little thrill down Kaneki’s spine.

Her mutilated face no longer smiles but he winds up again and again, one hand crushing her throat while the other scrapes bone on bone. Blood runs in rivulets down his wrists and stains the flowers in spatters, but it isn’t enough. Stronger than he ever remembered being, her thrashing barely moves him. Bloody right hand forcing her chin upwards, his left holds her down by the space between her collarbones. Exposing her neck, so white and rich with veins.

She still has a voice box, so her screams grate horribly on his nerves. Even with his hand forcing her mouth shut, the shriek she gives is so satisfying it sends blood straight to his groin. His teeth grip the soft, loose skin at her neck and tear away in a fluid motion, the dark blood pooling all around and staining the lilies red. She gurgles, the blood in her neck bubbling and gushing in spurts. Every red lily spreads its garish color to the whites, until they’re both lying in a sea of bloody spider lilies. He pushes Rize away, her body still twitching and leaking blood.

 _Well done, Ken_ , she rasps.

“I don’t care,” he says.

* * *

 For the first time in many years, Kaneki has a nightmare.

He bolts up in bed, body covered in a thin layer of sweat and a guilty tightness in his boxers. Cold water turns his white hair gray as he leans on the shower wall, testing his teeth for residual traces of blood. If the noises of traffic through the thin walls are any indication, his roommates won’t be pleased with him in the morning. There’s an emptiness in his chest that feels foreign; he almost thinks he’ll rattle if he jumps.

Plain white bathroom drawers turn up nothing interesting, save for loose hairpins and dark nail polish.

He can’t look at himself in the mirror. It all horrifies him. His hands are shaking badly, as if searching for a neck to throttle.

He paints them black instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haunt // Bed - The 1975


	5. Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tsukiyama Shuu finds his new muse in Kaneki Ken, idly browsing through Instagram over his white work desk. It is not Economics 102. It is not 10:32 AM, on the twenty-first day of April, when Kaneki Ken’s eye drew a bead on that cultured visage.
> 
> What matters, however, is that Tsukiyama looks back. He looks back at Kaneki Ken, several years late, and thinks that he is beautiful, too.
> 
> And he has to have him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Independence Day. (And a belated Canada Day, for our Northern friends.)

The true caveat is what the doctors never tell you: that after the tsunami come the little riptides that are lesser in stature but no less deadly. An arrest in artery is followed by tiny deaths in vein, in capillary, in cell. It radiates; a spiderweb of damage. Even three years after he met Rize, she still tickles the back of his brain.

Kaneki understands, now, why Hamlet despaired so endlessly. Wise to the consequences of living, so lovingly did death entice him.

He would be a liar, if he said that he did not consider death like the prince. But earthly matters have a way of wrapping Kaneki in its tendrils and hitching his ankles to the ground. So too does he trudge on through Tokyo, haphazardly patching up the holes as he goes along.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, there are few opportunities for ex-convicts to regain a normal life. But as Kaneki had been anything _but_ normal for years now, it doesn’t sting as much as it might have. In fact, had he not fallen into this mess, he wouldn’t know where he’d be otherwise.

(Or on second thought, he does.)

(Dangling above a chair, his salaryman suit hiking up around his socks. Probably.)

This existence isn’t so bad.

* * *

These days, he makes enough money to cover his (depressingly cheap) rent on Harajuku, of all places. It took him a couple years to amass a following on Instagram and Pinterest, fueled by his melancholy brand of street fashion. Odd modeling jobs and “outfit of the day” posts are what keep him afloat. Bone-white hair and morbid monochrome become trademarks of his; local shop endorsements and the occasional job hook-up throw extra money his way. Sometimes he writes; if he’s lucky, his more eloquent stories are picked up by zines and pulp, a small commission his reward. All without a single background check.

It’s illogical and laughable, even, but he of all people cannot judge himself. When choices are so limited, there is little else to settle for. Sometimes he has enough money to buy packs of beer or cartons of cigarettes at the corner store.(He never does, though; he was cursed with an addictive mind, but blessed with a healthy dose of caution.)

Sasaki Haise, he calls himself, in the void of the Internet where people neither have the motivation nor the resources to fact-check his statements. Just in case he’s recognized by his real name―the rest is so different now that it’s impossible for anyone that matters to identify him any other way. His unusual hair color becomes a point of fascination, though it wears off slowly now, overtaken by black roots.

* * *

He rarely feels alone, because, if he is honest with himself, he never is. It’s isolation, but the sort that pulls him out the door and among the people. It’s something that Hide never understood.

 _If it weren’t for me, you’d be a shut-in for sure_ , Hide used to say, a joke that didn’t quite sound like one. As if solitude was a crime.

But it is not; at least, not by his morals. He sees an understanding in the people around him. _Il souvait qu’elle était, mais il ne pouvait pas trouver les mots_. A lurk in the eye of the similarly lost. It carries intimacy, like the pulse of a wrist under one’s fingers. Those who, for his purposes, hang in the background, but have life and character nonetheless. He sees it in the café he once visited in Nerima, long ago: the kindly manager who traced “の” in every coffee cup, the dark-haired barista who always scrutinized him as if she couldn’t decide whether to compliment or chastise him. It’s in the broad-shouldered man he often sees between train transfers, striding determinedly with a white briefcase in one hand and the other to the cross necklace round his collar. Even in the models of his fashion magazines, long-legged in flowered frocks. Such intriguing characters, some of which make it into his stories without them even knowing it.

He could call it people-watching, but he spends fewer days wondering about the _what if_ s and more on the _move-on_ s.

It was never a question of loneliness. Kaneki does not care about being alone anymore; at least, when sitting cross-legged in a silent cell for years of his life became the norm. The past is long gone, and Kaneki for all his flaws cannot bring himself to call that time “wasted”. Life moves on with or without that piece of him.

* * *

Tsukiyama Shuu finds his new muse in Kaneki Ken, idly browsing through Instagram over his white work desk. It is not Economics 102. It is not 10:32 AM, on the twenty-first day of April, when Kaneki Ken’s eye drew a bead on that cultured visage.

What matters, however, is that Tsukiyama looks back. He looks back at Kaneki Ken, several years late, and thinks that he is beautiful, too.

And he has to have him.

* * *

At first, Kaneki is skeptical of the request. He is aware that his profile was less-than-obscure, but it is unusual to receive a business proposition from such a high-profile designer. The 月山-emblazoned email almost goes into the junk folder, yet the nag of the utility bill stops his hand. Things that require money, offers he can’t pass on.

So he replies on a whim. In the same crisp, professional tone that Tsukiyama Shuu had given him, he asks the perfunctory: _what_ , _when_ , _how_.

 _Do you have the authority to hire me for this?_ He asks, his phrasing slightly accusatory.

Tsukiyama does not answer directly. _The company is interested in you_ , he says. _Are you interested in us?_

A game of cat-and-mouse; not uncommon, in the cutthroat world Kaneki has stumbled into. Money is money, and much as he dislikes admitting it, Tsukiyama’s time is worth ten times more than his. Reluctance aside, Kaneki has little reason not to trust this offer.

But then, he used to have little reason not to trust red-eyed girls with poison in their hands.

 _Let me convince you_ , Tsukiyama wheedles, the persuasion evident in simple kanji.

That surprises him. Never before had anyone proven themselves to Kaneki. It had always been he that had proven himself to others. Inferior, until persuaded otherwise. Weak, until he showed his use. Rize had loved his malleability, the way he followed her slavishly like she was the queen she believed herself to be. His aunt for his weakness, submissive and obligated to follow out of respect for his departed mother. Perhaps Hide is the exception, though only because Kaneki cannot figure out what benefit Hide got from their friendship.

Kaneki knows better, now, than to worship a deity; for it never ends well. The gods he so cherished were all so fallible, so utterly human. He no longer bends to the ground to sweep the dust off their shoes.

Perhaps it is time for someone else to do the praying.

* * *

Sasaki Haise is more beautiful in person, starkly-colored in feathers of black shot with white, a pair of rounded spectacles on his small nose giving him a sharp owlish look. Tsukiyama had Kanae escort him to his studio, the fifth of sixty stories that reached upwards into the Tokyo sky. If he gets close to the glass, he can stare directly into the street below, unobstructed with the fog that inevitably obscures details at higher altitudes.

( _You are not an entry-level employee_ , Mirumo said, frowning. _Shuu-kun, why don’t you take an office more befitting your position?_ )

“You went to Kamii, didn’t you?” Sasaki says suddenly. He touches the back of the white _chaise longue_ , elegant fingers sweeping the fabric.

The question catches Tsukiyama off guard. He hopes he doesn’t show it. “For a few semesters, yes,” he replies. “Did you know me?”

“Economics 102. Yukigawa-sensei. We were in the same class together.”

His eyebrows rise. It is difficult to believe that someone so striking could have ever shared the lecture hall with him. Tsukiyama is used to being the peacock in a sea of pigeons; his eye would have been caught in his snare for certain.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” Tsukiyama says, smiling thinly. This stranger perplexes him; his eyes tighten, settling into the pattern of formality he’s been conditioned for since a boy. Sasaki Haise is intriguing, but his disarming words alarm him.

Perhaps it would have been easier if they were strangers.

Sasaki’s smile is open. “No. I am quite changed, from my university days.” He adjusts his glasses as if to illustrate this point. They glint off panels of light streaming from the windows.

“As have I,” Tsukiyama says mirthfully, tucking the edge of his (now-blue) fringe behind his ear. It’s longer than either of them remember.

Crossing to his standing desk, Tsukiyama snaps up a loose ebony pencil and twirls it between his fingers, sizing Sasaki’s slender figure up. So lean and graceful like the models he designs, but he’s certain that the sweater and coat hide something tense and deadly. He wants so badly to take a picture and draw a hundred sketches of him on the spot. (It goes without saying that he does not.)

“Pray tell, then: what were you doing in Economics class when you are standing here?”

Sasaki shrugs. “I had a change of heart.” ( _Liar. You make it sound so easy_.)

It is not often that Tsukiyama Shuu is at a loss for words. But then, it is not often that he is so enamored with a person like Sasaki. They are dancing around the topic; they both know it. But why? The lengthening silence accuses him.

“Have you had a change of heart about this arrangement?” Tsukiyama waves a finger between the two of them: he at the desk, Sasaki across the room at the sofa.

Slowly, Sasaki walks towards Tsukiyama’s work desk, leaning against it with arms by his sides across from Tsukiyama. They mirror each other. Two poses so similar, their actors oceans away in visage and demeanor. Tsukiyama has to look down to meet Sasaki’s eye, the latter noticeably shorter than he.

Finally, Sasaki cocks his head slightly, a teasing smile playing at his mouth’s corners. “Depends,” he says, moving a centimeter closer. He smells like coffee and fresh air. “Do you want me to wear your designs, or do you want your designs to wear me?” Tsukiyama’s gaze follows his, eyeing his sketchbook warily.

Tsukiyama cranes his neck to glance at his corkboard of failed experiments, growing more crowded by the day. His sketch-models’ pinprick eyes stare blankly; they do not even deign to look at him in disapproval, or sadness. Lacking something.

“Paper could never do you justice,” he says, breathless.

Something softens in Sasaki’s face, the tight screws on his faceplate façade loosened and the oil leaking out. Nodding wordlessly, he reaches out hesitantly. Rests his hand on Tsukiyama’s.

(It’s warm.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drown - Marika Hackman


	6. Crests

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The wrens’ eyes upward  
> Their fat bodies in motion  
> Paper altitude.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Crawls out of coffin* I live! But for how long? (cue suspenseful orchestra)
> 
> I almost gave up on this chapter several times because I had no idea where it was going, but I guess I'm back on track now. Incidentally, I frequently hear wrens outside my room. Don't know if it's the case in Japan, but house wrens are mean motherfuckers in our part of the US.

Sometimes, the mother he rarely remembers takes the backseat in his life, drifting into the corners of his retinas and the shadows on his wall. She haunts him as she had lived; a presence felt, but not acknowledged. An empty throne is in their house; built for a queen, but the queen no longer possessing a corpse to perch upon it.

Tsukiyama remembers her as a calm, unassuming presence. Possibly radiant, possibly wonderful, but remote as the moon on their family crest. Not fit to recall; not fit to miss.

Snatches of detail linger: her cold, wet hands caressing his face, dips and grooves of her rings. Soft shuffling of _uwabaki_ on tile. A smear of crimson lipstick on his thumb from scrubbing the evidence of her love. Words that made little sense to his young ears from weepy old ladies and insincere businessmen. An adoration that, logically, should stay in his heart, but does not. How can he love someone never captured in memory?

“A Tsukiyama does not weep,” his father said, staring at her box with eyes that threatened to betray him. The only son (of his dear mother’s line) obeyed.

Perhaps one of the easiest promises he had ever made.

* * *

 Beauty is in the unusual. Rarely, if ever, are pigeons noticed by their fine-feathered counterparts, lost in the sea of those like them.

Tsukiyama was unusual. He was beautiful.

Kaneki was typical. He was beneath notice.

They did not meet in Economics 102. This is why.

* * *

 “Bringing your work home, Shuu-kun?” Mirumo asks, eyeing the sketchbook in his lap on their car ride home.

“In case inspiration strikes, Papa,” Shuu-kun replies in his mysterious child-tone, the one he knows will get his father to drop the subject.

Though his expression is hidden under reflective glasses and facial hair, Shuu can read Mirumo’s fatherly humor effortlessly. He smiles; shakes his head and muses about “young artists and their secrecy”.

It’s okay not to understand, Father. Truly, he is not alone.

* * *

 Tsukiyama gets not a wink of sleep; each time he lays down, Sasaki’s face swims around like the stars he sees when he presses hard against his eyelids. The essence of his character is nebulous and free-floating; it is an unwritten language that resists the translation from speech to text and every sketch he makes looks less like his muse and more like a cheap parody. Like a harlequin attempting to inflate a balloon by cupping the air in his gloves.

In the end, he prints a picture. Cuts it apart in a paper doll and glues the pieces into his book, drawing the outfit around his paper face and arms. Scrapbooking _à la mode_.

He gives him a blazer in his favorite red paisley, cream slacks, a boater to finish the look. Completely garish, but the type of outfit he would have designed in his school days. They looked good, back then.

But he sees paper Haise in his gaudy ensemble and dislikes it immensely. It goes into the trash without a second glance; not even deigning to pin it to his graveyard. It would only shame him.

With increasing desperation he tries out every floral pattern in the book. Every trademark falls short: his miniature daisies, laced vines, overlapping sunflowers. Of his favorite flowers, none of them work on his favorite model. A style that does not fit the muse, much as his former muses never suited his designs.

He laughs humorlessly. He traded in his elaborate _tableaux vivants_ , and now has his _memento mori_. A hurdle cleared, another to cross.

Design after design is crumpled and hurled in shame. Sasaki Haise is as perplexing as he is aesthetically pleasing. His pale beauty fights Tsukiyama’s delicate designs with ferocity; they will not stay on his shoulders. They overshadow him, those eye-catching prints and avant-garde silhouettes. And neither of them would bear it.

He fights until three, when sleep pulls him down without warning.

Cold hands. (No, warm. Correct.)

* * *

 A memory comes back to him in the throes of sleep, one that would make a psychoanalyst perch on the edge of their seat and hum in thought for the whole session, sucking on that lozenge with Pavlovian interest.

Mother’s touch, clammy and cold; dead as a corpse even when she was still alive. Wet hands, wet with what, he isn’t sure. He is aware of a stinging in his knees: the cry of raw flesh and child alike. Her thumb swipes the hot tears away. No doubt, they burn her hands. Gold ring shining in the pale sunlight as she tries vainly to calm him. The edge of her diamond catches his cheek, not hard enough to cut but enough to make him jerk back.

Morning comes rudely, knocking at his door and forcing his eyelids apart in their lovers’ embrace. His lips chase the taste of guilt; but he knows, logically, that there is little to be sorry for.

He has long since given up on analyzing his dreams. When daytime is so fraught with symbolism and hidden meanings, why bother picking apart his nightly affairs? Best to leave it to the pseudo-professionals with their _chaises longues_ and white goatees.

* * *

 Tsukiyama knows what to do, as he unlocks his studio doors and strides resolutely to his work desk. The palettes of the season’s latest patterns are exiled to a corner, full-color magazines shuttered and catalogues closed. His drawing books, filled with various iterations of Van Gogh’s almond blossoms, are turned aside.

From a shelf he rarely visits, he rescues his still-new interior decorating guides. Pages of tasteful composition tips fly until he pins the book open at the pantones. Spectra of gray stare up blankly. A part of him wilts at the limited range. But then, he remembers, would not that white rose wilt too, when watered from a toxic well?

A crude figure blooms from the page; he is careful to sketch Sasaki’s lean frame and layered hair, but neglects adding facial features. He would only disappoint himself with a drawing of someone else’s likeness. (He knows, that catching all of Sasaki’s features is unattainable at his current state. Tsukiyama is over-ambitious, but he doesn’t make the same mistake twice.)

Slowly, but surely, the ideas come to fruition. A cape coat with a clean silhouette, hitting just above the hips in black. Caviar, he selects from the color chips. He dares to choose his fitted trousers an eggshell grey, retreating to his black in a pair of elegant ankle boots. No further embellishments to be made, not that he doesn’t secretly object.

It’s the simplest design he’s made in years. He suspects that if he left the drawing unsigned, even Papa would not even tell it was his work. In a way it is relieving, shedding his trademarks and becoming unrecognizable for just a little while. But a tiny doubt squirms at the prospect of anonymity. It feels like a betrayal of his brood; scorning iridescent feathers for raven’s down.

He pushes the thought away. He’s gotten good at doing that over the years.

* * *

 “I’m flattered,” Sasaki says, a smile playing at his lips. He thumbs through the product of week-long labor, a clean and sterile collection.

Tsukiyama meets his eyes expectantly.

But Sasaki pushes the papers away, back to Tsukiyama’s workspace. Despite the gentle way he does it, he can’t help but grimace at the rejection.

Sasaki tilts his head, the smile disappearing.

“You know why,” He says softly, laying a hand on the table. “They’re beautiful, but they’re not yours. Don’t sacrifice yourself for my sake.” His voice grows sharp at this last. “I won’t allow it.”

Inhaling sharply, Tsukiyama lays his hand on Sasaki’s, pale and unmarred. He’s still staring at the pile of drawings. Somehow it hurts more than seeing them pinned to his wall of shame.

“I’m sorry,” he finally exhales, head down in a mock-bow. Sasaki wishes he could card his hands through his hair, whisper his own transgressions.

All he can say is, “I know”.

* * *

 After he leaves, Tsukiyama gathers up the collection―no, experiment―and taps them together into a neat stack, running his hands along the edges. With fabric scissors, he methodically slices his drawings apart. The paper creaks under the blades.

He gathers the strips and cuts them again, criss-cross. Tiny paper rectangles fall at his desk, some scattering to the floor in varying shades of gray. Little ceremony, as he sweeps the pieces into the wastebasket. Confetti for a party. Not that there’s much cause for celebration.

* * *

 When he rolls over at 3 AM, throwing the covers off, it’s because his head is a mess, plagued by elusive figures so near, yet so impossible to capture. Much as he enjoys packing his memories of Sasaki into boxes and organizing them by caption and title, they always float free in his headspace. The _interêt du jour_ (or more appropriately, _de nuit_ ), as evidenced by his fevered drawings, is lips: soft curves of them, upturned in smiles, pursed as if in thought, parted to reveal barest hints of teeth. Beloved lips, over and over again as Tsukiyama is wont to do. As the hours wear on, they take the shape of sweet peas, their lip-shaped petals winding sketchbook space. He considers making a pattern of it—delicate sweet pea on muslin; twill, maybe, if he’ll be daring.

He thinks of Sasaki, a bundle of contradiction; playing on his name, he draws a bird with sweet peas in its beak, its triangular wings bearing ungainly flight. It’s as close to a doodle as he gets. A bird, then another, then another, until his page is filled with the tiled mosaic of birds and flowers. They stare forward in even procession and he cannot bring himself to discard the page; it is far too sentimental, foolishly so.

The wrens’ eyes upward, their fat bodies in motion, paper altitude.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Square - Mitski](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbzfFsprMrs)


	7. Tails

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Birds, passing one after the other, indistinguishable as individuals, swirl as water on oil. Leaving the ground, they trust that they will someday return to its embrace. 
> 
> If only Kaneki was as sure of his fate; he who lacks the concealment of spares, who is forced to bear the sky alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Je suis vivante! Incidentally, I think this is the first chapter in which I haven't used superfluous French. Make of that what you will.
> 
> Midterm exams are in only a week, and here I am with a chapter! Guess what that means...*cough*procrastination*cough* But really, a lot of this was written during classes when I should have been paying attention, so if things are more jumbled and make less sense then usual--well, now you know why. I tried to revise it as I was transitioning this from scribbles in my journal to a computer document, if that helped at all.
> 
> It's an extra-long chapter, so if you don't mind the strange chronology, it might just be a good thing.

Kaneki keeps a running total of lies in his head. It may have been something that his parole officer had proposed. (He remembers that she quite clearly said, in a not-very-kind tone, to “stop lying and admit guilt”, but words are made to be interpreted.)

First and foremost in his file of fabrications: _this is just a job_.

He cannot devote lines in a ledger to the smiles they’ve exchanged (five), put a price tag on quiet conversation (0.67 billable hours), or appraise the value of his likeness drawn on paper (23 × 30 cm, 14 pages). The presence of undocumented extras complicates the situation.

And every time Tsukiyama gives him his studying, pattern-picking, color-matching looks, a part of him sinks to recall that he, a fraud, is being made to dress as a counterfeit of himself. A sheep in wolf’s clothes, being dressed in the shepherd’s.

Would Tsukiyama even grant him the time of day, if he knew? Or perhaps scorn him, toss him out on the street like a broken toy and buy a new one tomorrow?

* * *

 Tsukiyama made him promise to stop sparing his feelings after the fifth failed design.

“What about this?” Holding up his sketchpad, his face is open and hopeful.

Kaneki carefully takes it in hand, looking closer at the abomination drawn upon it: a cyan-and-evergreen plaid tailored suit, painted over with violet motifs. It is, undeniably, a Tsukiyama creation; but a horrible one, at that. Was he perhaps colorblind?

“I don’t like violets,” he says finally.

Tsukiyama seems undeterred. “Shall I make them green instead?”

“What—they wouldn’t be violets anymore then, would they?”

“The color doesn’t matter,” Tsukiyama replies, impatient, furrowing his brow. “But I can’t keep guessing at what you want. Tell me what’s wrong with it.”

“I—I don’t—”

Tsukiyama cuts him off with a smile. “Sasaki-san,” he begins, saccharine-sweet, “In the fashion industry, you cannot hope to survive without encountering criticism. It affects me no more when it comes from you.”

It’s a sting; in a fleeting moment, Tsukiyama’s calm demeanor adopts his professional, closed veneer. The type of tone, he recalls, reserved for clients and employees, and he is harshly reminded of his place.

Kaneki seals his lips together and tightens his posture. “Understood.”

Tsukiyama nods brusquely, and the tension is cracked. “Right,” he barks. “Away this goes.”

With a snap, he tears out the offending design and slaps it face-down, on the opposite end of the table.

It takes time for “no” to become a permanent phrase of his expanded vocabulary.

* * *

 Tsukiyama takes the pattern of his ceremonial obi, turns cherry blossoms to thistle leaves and looping gold gilt to geometric lines. His grandmother would have a conniption over the vandalism of Japanese traditional wear.

He feels guilty, but not enough to stop.

* * *

 Kaneki was four weeks in when he first saw the guards covered in specks of blood, as they wrestled to the ground a man who had slit his wrists with a pair of broken spectacles. “Let me die,” he had muttered, among other things, as he writhed on red-stained concrete.

But he didn’t die, to the surprise of no one.

The gravest mistake of all: that he hadn’t even cut his wrists properly; just kitten scratches straight across. Kaneki had little sympathy to spend, and even less to give.

_“Across the street for attention, down the street for results,"_ Someone close to him had once said.

Feverish on his futon that night, he traced the veins of his arms and wished for a misplaced knife.

* * *

 After a few (hundred) rejected designs, he begins to hide his colors in places paper won’t reveal. Flowers worm their ways into the lining of Sasaki’s coats, petals peeking out of sleeves. Jewel-green buttons and brass zippers close in on his cuffs and boots.

Sasaki must notice them (he gets a little too liberal with the gold trim, one day), but he smiles secretly and says, “not bad” every time they meet. It’s addictive.

(The first time Sasaki laughs, his chest swells like his heart grew lungs of its own and took its first breaths.)

It almost makes him forget the hollow, haunted look in his eyes that strikes him at times he hasn’t found the pattern behind, when he speaks in dry phrases and turns pointedly to the next page as he changes the subject.

* * *

 The winter is colder than usual this year; a far cry from the sweltering summers that Tokyo is known for. Steadily as the leaves die, Tsukiyama’s drawings collect—designs more subdued than last year’s collection, but all the richer for his muse in mind.

Reluctant as he is to admit so, Sasaki—Kaneki—makes a ritual of his sessions with Tsukiyama. The secretaries know him well now. At times, he catches them sharing a secret knowing glance as they buzz him into the building.

So little bothers him these days, and yet their conspiratorial interactions invariably create ripples in his serene facade.

Tsukiyama’s lily-white hands thumb through countless scripts and scraps and Kaneki wonders if they ever stitch anything real. Is his medium of choice truly so cold? Sometimes he wants to hold them close to his chest, breathe on them to return life to the veins—which is entirely inappropriate—but nevertheless—

“It’s nearly done,” Tsukiyama says on a December Monday, as casually as one speaks of the weather, and for a new record this year, Sasaki is surprised.

“Already?”

Tsukiyama sounds wry. “You’ll miss these sessions?”

Innocently enough the question is asked, but Kaneki can feel its weight increasing the air pressure.

It’s so easy to lie; he has perfected this art long before college, though he suspects that some people will never have the wool pulled over their eyes.

And he wants to. Such a small thing, like a flame aching to be crushed.

His tongue doesn’t want to form the words. “I...think I will,” responds Sasaki.

The room is chilly again; why are white rooms always so cold? Tsukiyama smiles, and it radiates warmth. He sweeps a lock of pale hair away from his eyes; Kaneki’s eyes follow the movement for a split second before snapping back into place.

“Now tell me,” he says, fanning the pages before him with a flourish, “are you wearing these clothes, or are the clothes wearing you?”

Sasaki returns the smile humorlessly. “They are works of art, much too beautiful for me. I shall wear them, but only because you deem me worthy of them.”

“I beg to differ.” Tsukiyama’s expression is so serious. Kaneki cannot help but laugh—it rings like silver bells.

He turns away; his skin has always been too pale to conceal his flush.

* * *

 “Don’t you have tailors to do this for you?” Sasaki asks, twisting round to allow Tsukiyama to fiddle with his jacket hem. Tsukiyama is silent; perhaps lost in thought, or trapping the truth between his teeth.

He is fixed upon the creases in his shirt that few would ever note, smoothing crinkles with fingers that push the boundaries of politeness. All in the name of art, one would say. They are spun frozen, in the curious intermediate area of tentative professionalism and impropriety.

On one hand, they are familiar enough for Sasaki to sprawl catlike over Tsukiyama’s ottoman and flick through his collection plans and his models’ headshots. But then, the room makes its uneasy swirl with a page-turn of his catalogue, unending rows of fashionable darlings at the ready ( _Minagawa Kurosuke, 23 years old, blood type A, previously modeled for the 2013 Fall Collection_ ). All begging for the clothes that Sasaki would veto immediately.

And he wonders if Tsukiyama had ever gifted his true smile upon them and buttoned their collars to the throats, and wonders what makes him so special—is he really?

It’s been a long time since he last felt the trappings of desire. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but the burned child forever fears the flame.

The fire licks his damaged skin when Firestorm Tsukiyama brushes hair away from his neck and the gooseflesh burns; he goes home and chain-smokes on the balcony until the nicotine gives him a headache.

Sometimes, he reaches into his pocket for a package no longer there, feeling for a bag he no longer keeps. The itching in his skin telegraphs up his frayed neurons, and if he lets it have its way, he might do it, he really might. He might redial the number he’s learned by heart. He might take the train at three A.M. And he might walk to San’ya, in the dark (“knock thrice and ask for Yamori,” she said).

Yes, he wonders who Tsukiyama touches with his artist fingers; whose collars he adjusts and feels a little more for. Lines upon lines of statuesque beauties, clamoring for his hand.

And Kaneki is the pigeon in the sea of swans, each more beautiful than the last.

What does Tsukiyama see, beyond this farce?

* * *

 Kaneki (Sasaki) is more popular online than he had ever expected; perhaps it is his fashion sense, or purely his exotic appeal. (If the latter is the case, he’s glad none of his followers have met him in person, for they would be sorely disappointed, indeed.)

His best photos are taken in a back alleyway of Ginza, halfway between a _conbini_ and a gastropub. If he stands the tripod at the tail end of the alley, and stands himself at its mouth, he can catch the neon front of the neighborhood laundromat and the occasional passerby’s elbow.

He is the only person in Tokyo, it seems, when he visits the tiny park a few blocks from his childhood home in the wee hours of the morning. The chain-link fence is weak and the wire easily teased aside; the neighborhood too poor for a repairman to fix it or an officer to watch it. The bench sheltered beneath the arms of an aged gingko beckons, but he cannot stay for more than a photo, lest the lamp at its foot reveal his silhouette to more than just his camera.

And that moon, again (perched atop Toranomon Hills all the way in Minato) implores him to make his choice, which he cannot avoid forever.

An ache settling in his teeth, Sasaki (Kaneki, too?) is disorganized. Helpful as always, the moon curls her round face about him and offers no answers. He breathes in the night chill and thinks of Rize; does her poison sleep within Tsukiyama as well? Are red eyes and violet hair indicative of a rotten core? That moonlike countenance and cardinal coloring—do they spell salvation or seal his fate?

* * *

  _The dogwood shivers; in flight, the pigeons warble. Moonlight reflects, briefly, upon their iridescent feathers. Cooing grows distant._

_Do the peacocks ever fly?_

_Sasaki. A wren: a songbird. How they chortle and chirp to disguise their plainer plumage._

_“What bird is that?” The_ gaijin _ask._

_“The wren,” answer the natives. But the wren is never an unusual sight, no matter the country; even then the strangers know their calls._

_“Then let us pretend the trees are singing, for the Japanese maples are more beautiful than they.”_

_Sasaki is the false feather, the borrowed wing, that which Tsukiyama admires, the fool. Oh, Kaneki is a liar. Rize twines her lean coils round his better arm and smiles at him with those black eyes. Then, extricates, disintegrates._

_Birds, passing one after the other, indistinguishable as individuals, swirl as water on oil. Leaving the ground, they trust that they will someday return to its embrace._

_If only Kaneki was as sure of his fate; he who lacks the concealment of spares, who is forced to bear the sky alone._

* * *

 Kaneki still has her phone number in his old mobile: a piece of the old life, long left. It’s likely been disconnected, but he hasn’t tried calling since the day they allotted him a phone call from the municipal jail.

“ _Moshimoshi_ , _this is Kamishiro Rize. You’ve just missed me, call again later._ ”

That was the last time he heard her voice.

He’d be lying if said he did not dwell on where she was, or even miss her a little bit: miss the way that she laid next to him until morning when she didn’t need to, had a home to return to, had classes across campus in the early hours to attend to. The empty space in his apartment does not take her shape, but she would settle into the corners nevertheless.

Rize always had a way of finding her way back to him, as he with her; two fucked-up compasses pointing at the same North. The fact that they remain apart, though, is all he needs to know.

The truth hurts, but many good things do.

* * *

 “Matsumae,” Tsukiyama says, without preamble.

She’s serving his tea and straightening the seat pillows. Unperturbed, her dry voice cuts crisp.

“Yes, Shuu-sama?” She rises to attention with all the readiness of a servant but with the arrogant ease of a housecat.

Tsukiyama closes his eyes. “What is the difference between loyalty and affection?”

Matsumae averts hers. Reining in her tongue, she curates her words carefully. She does not speak suddenly, but when she does, she is succinct.

“It is always a risk to harbor affection for the ones you work with,” she begins—for once, tentatively. “But...if you so choose, if you are willing to shoulder the risk...it becomes your strength. Shuu-sama.” This last, she tacks on hastily, canting her head in deference.

Tsukiyama is not quite comforted, but accepts the words nonetheless, swallowing them down like a tonic.

“Thank you, Matsumae.”

She must detect the troubled look on his face, so she moves closer and sits on the arm of his couch. Opening her arm, she allows him to rest his head upon her shoulder, and tucks a lock of stray hair behind his ear as he leans in.

No doubt, he is wrinkling her suit and unsmoothing her creases, but neither he nor she have cared much for vanities in such times. Matsumae is cold and unyielding, but as much of a mother as he could hope for.

“I’m sorry I could not be of more help,” Matsumae says gently.

“No, Matsumae,” replies he. There is no more to be said.

* * *

 When he draws, he pictures the fabric between his fingers, the drape of it pooling on the floor. He pictures Sasaki wearing it as a suit or a gown—does it look right on him?

His father displays his own collections proudly, as mementos of times past, and when Shuu flips through them, he sees his mother immortalized. She is striking like a swallow, her figure sleek and lean. Even then, he can see the care taken in selecting her clothing; each stitch, hem and seam is adjusted to caress her every dip and peak.

His picture-mother is nothing like the one that he remembers.

She wears a modish dress of Prussian blue that is cut sharply at the floor; an outer translucent layer forms the geometric silhouette of the skirt, but allows a flowing sheath underneath the first layer to hug her hips and fall freely. In defiance of the hairstyles plaguing her era, his mother’s is gathered in a delicate updo; the strands of her curls are so fine that light passes through them, but not a hair escapes from the hive.

And she is beautiful, but not because of her modelesque figure and dainty face; she is beautiful because his father deemed her so, and let everyone know it.

She was Tsukiyama Mirumo’s muse, as Sasaki Haise is Tsukiyama Shuu’s. Someday, perhaps, it is Sasaki’s pale, drawn face that will appear in those printed magazines; the face which fails to stir a fleeting emotion in most, but strikes the hearts of those who see the muse in him.

Although he does not love her the same way, he recognizes that very same admiration.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Vultures Like Lovers - Wild Nothing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udnX79jXQKQ)


End file.
